This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Half of Grade 12 students say they text and drive: Ontario survey

Wide-ranging report on youth for CAMH also details how girls are likelier to suffer from mental health concerns.

New driver Brandi Eadie, 16, looks down at her cell phone to read a text message as she drives through a rubber-cone course in Seattle on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010 to demonstrate the dangers of phone use while driving. (Elaine Thompson / The Associated Press)

Almost 50 per cent of Grade 12 students who drive and more than one-third of all licensed youth in high school say they’ve texted while driving in the past year, according to an ongoing survey of Ontario adolescents.

The finding is from the 2013 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, a wide-ranging biannual measure of youth mental health, well-being and risk behaviours conducted for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

The survey collected data from more than 10,000 middle and high school students through anonymous questionnaires that addressed subjects as varied as whether they feel unsafe at school (15 per cent) to how often they play video games (20 per cent said daily).

Health professionals say the survey results show more needs to be done to warn about the dangers of distracted driving, and when it comes to mental health issues some students — particularly girls — may be unnecessarily falling through the cracks.

“It’s a very dangerous behaviour,” Dr. Robert Mann, a senior scientist with CAMH, said about texting and driving. “It can increase the chances of being in a collision more than 20 times, and we know that the Ontario government has been making efforts to raise people’s awareness of this and introduced the distracted diving offence.”

One of Mann’s research areas is the epidemiology of alcohol-related problems like drunk driving. He said that young people appear to be getting the message on not consuming before getting behind the wheel, but the similarity to texting is not coming through.

“Young people are very attached to their phones — to their electronic devices,” he said, noting the survey found more than 80 per cent of them visit social media sites daily.

“(Texting and driving) may be just a side effect of this generation being so linked in.”

It was the first year the survey asked about texting and driving, and the transportation woes don’t stop there. Almost 80 per cent of adolescent bicyclists reported not always wearing a helmet, while more than half said they rarely or never don protective headgear.

“We’re learning more about the association between traumatic brain injuries and mental health issues in young people and it’s important to get the message out that wearing your helmet can prevent a whole range of problems,” Mann said.

Detecting and preventing mental health problems early has one CAMH scientist concerned about another survey result. Almost 30 per cent of students said there was a time in the past year they wanted to talk to someone about an issue but didn’t know where to turn.

“We need to be thinking about child and youth mental health not through the mental health treatment system but through the places where children and youth already are, the places they naturally gravitate toward, the places where adults have the opportunity to be paying attention,” said Dr. Joanna Henderson, the head of research with CAMH’s child, youth and family program.

“We know that if we identify kids early and we intervene early, outcomes can be enhanced.”

Henderson noted the stark differences between girls and boys regarding mental health concerns, with girls twice as likely to report an unmet need for support (38 vs. 19 per cent).

Across the board, girls were more likely to rate their mental health as fair/poor (21 vs. 11 per cent), say they have low self-esteem (11 vs. 2 per cent) and to have suffered symptoms of depression and anxiety (36 vs. 17 per cent).

One of the most concerning, said Henderson, was that one-in-eight students had serious thoughts about suicide in the past year, with 18 per cent for girls and 9 per cent for boys. Girls were also more likely to report actual attempts (5 vs. 2 per cent).

Addressing why the results vary for boys and girls is no easy task, but Henderson said that by the time both sexes leave high school the numbers tend to converge. The key appears to once again be early targeting and prevention.

“That transition from elementary school to high school is a difficult transition for many,” said Henderson. “The level of support they have in elementary school around academic requirements decreases, the social group starts to shift, there are changes in peer relationships and now a romantic relationship piece.”

“For girls, the results are indicators that they are experiencing stress through this transition,” she continued. “They’re thinking about whether they’re living up to their own expectations, which are influenced by family and the media and the school system and their peers.”

On a positive note, the survey found bullying appears to be declining. Over the past decade the percentage of students who reported being bullied fell to 25 per cent from 33 per cent, while those who said they bullied others fell to 16 per cent from 30 per cent.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com